Stories of crossroads, sacrifices for love, hard physical work in the cotton fields and on the railways and oppressive relations may be at the essence of the blues and of American popular music. But that doesn’t stop them from finding a universal echo in musicians across the Atlantic, as happens sublimely with the Italians Roots Magic – a quartet on the Portuguese Clean Feed label – which, on special occasions like this, expands to a sextet. With a menu of themes written by Skip James, Charley Patton, Sun Ra or Ornette Coleman, the blues appear here in all their spiritual dimension and African lineage, sometimes recontextualised by the lexicon of free jazz. A music that, in many ways, knows no borders.